Temporary Freedom From the Patriot Act

Many Americans have been heard to mimic the media’s disdain for partisan gridlock
in Washington, but because Congress and the president often do the wrong thing,
it’s often better when nothing is done. For example, after the Congress’s inaction
recently allowed sections of the Patriot Act to lapse, I was so ecstatic about
my newfound freedom that I, like victims of Soviet oppression when the USSR
collapsed, didn’t know what to do with myself. However, my decision on how to
take advantage of my freshly won freedom vis-à-vis government surveillance
had to be made fast, because that freedom was likely to be short-lived. Congress
was likely to soon reform the Patriot Act with the "USA Freedom Act and
did."

I didn’t really know any jihadists to call, and even if I did, I would have
just told them that they would be better off getting another more benevolent
and productive occupation. But at least I was free of the government’s clearly
unconstitutional collection of Americans’ phone metadata (call origin, call
receiver, duration of conversation, and location information).

Although the politicians in all three branches of government for a time told
us that such a provision was constitutional and appropriate, they began to read
public opinion polls that expressed concern about the government of a free republic
spying on its citizens en masse. Suddenly the tide shifted and an unusual left-right
coalition formed for reforming the always-excessive Patriot Act, which was passed
in the post-9/11 hysteria of late 2001. Since then, like many other products
marketed in America (mouthwash, dandruff shampoo, car tires, etc.), the politicians
and the media profited from using fear to convince Americans that the government
needed extensive surveillance powers. Never mind that the average American’s
chance of ever getting killed by a terrorist is remote – a lower probability than
getting struck by lightning. So that is to not to say that no threat exists,
but that the public, by being bombarded with all of this external "perception
management," was understandably experiencing what experts call "probability
neglect" about the actual severity of the threat.

However, public opinion began to shift when Edward Snowden, an NSA contractor,
exposed the government’s secretive and unconstitutional collection of Americans’
phone records. That policy seemed to go against the very foundations of what
the American republic stood for – and its violation of the Fourth Amendment to
the Constitution, which requires government specificity in search warrants to
guard against the use of general warrants for surveillance fishing expeditions
(the British did such things in colonial times), supports that conclusion. In
addition, despite the fact that the government can get as much information from
mapping calls using phone records as it can snooping into the actual conversations,
it thwarted no act of terrorism by using the phone records program. (I wonder
what would happen if the public ever realized that the main cause of anti-U.S.
Islamist terrorism is jihadist objection to non-Muslim – that is, American – military
or covert interventions on Muslim soil, and that since World War II the United
States has profligately meddled in the affairs of Islamic countries around the
world. However, Americans are not usually big on history, and that fact allows
politicians and the media to peddle American nationalism and overseas jingoism
as patriotism and love of country. Perhaps patriotism should instead be defined
as defending the freedoms of the republic.)

Most of the left regards Snowden as a hero, and most of the right regards him
as a traitor. The reality is somewhere in the middle. Although he should not
have revealed some U.S. overseas spying programs – for example, the bugging of
German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cell phone – secret domestic spying on Americans
by its own intelligence agencies is so un-American that Snowden’s actions, despite
his other transgressions, probably should garner him a net positive assessment
in the history books. Also, it is hard to label someone a traitor when the Congress
has been forced to reform the unconstitutional program on which he blew the
whistle. Thus, the Obama administration, for reasons of both justice and pragmatism
(to find out where all of Snowden’s information went), should allow Snowden
to plea bargain a guilty plea to mishandling classified government information
and then pardon him.

This author did some congressional oversight of the NSA prior to 9/11. Back
then, the US intelligence community was still smarting over the congressional
discovery in the mid-1970s of its domestic spying during the Vietnam War. At
the time of my oversight, NSA and other intelligence agencies seemingly knew
that they would lose the support of the American people for their vital function
of spying on foreign threats if they again violated the Constitution by warrantless
spying on Americans. After 9/11, however, they allowed the Bush, and now the
Obama, administration to take them again down this ill-advised path; once again,
it has blown up in their faces. Intelligence agencies are secretive, but in
a republic, they still need public support for their legal and necessary activities
and the funding for them.

Public opinion on surveillance has changed so much as a result of Snowden’s
actions that even if the Congress reinstates some phone data snooping – the USA
Freedom Act requires phone companies, instead of the government, to store phone
data records and the government to get a specific warrant to access them when
tracking a particular suspected terrorist – freedom will have achieved a smaller,
but significant, victory in an era when many of America’s cherished freedoms
have been eroded.

So what did I choose to do with my brief period of freedom? I called and ordered
a pizza free from any fear that I would be on government surveillance records
in the extremely unlikely event that the pizza delivery shop was ever exposed
in the future as a front for foreign jihadist terrorists.